20 1May the LORD answer you when you are in distress; may the name of the God of Jacob protect you."

The Psalmist explains everything that has come into the world has been devised and decreed by God. God is the Elohim of objective reality, the divine creator Jehovah. Jehovah is the God whose divine purposes are fulfilled according to His eternal covenant. Consequently, God did not create to right one law for one miss deed but to establish a mutual relationship with mankind. Instead of demanding complete obedience to the law as a necessary prerequisite to being acceptable, God entered time and accomplished the work. He bore the whole weight of distress upon Himself that resulted from a ruined world. In this manner, there is only one problem with mankind. It is the problem with sin that initiated an adversarial relationship with God. The familiar cry of men's hearts is to graciously be accepted. When a man is unaccepted, he is genuinely distressed.

 

But the problem is considerably deeper than designing a world where all men are unified acceptance. The problem is that when man sinned he becomes unable to deal with the level of distress that must be efficiently carried to help a neighbor. Corruption is the foundation of social violence against God and men. Likewise, God is the only one who can promise and demand absolute obedience. The purpose of Christ dwelling among men was not to ruin them in the demands that they failed. But it was to be a substitute who regarded them like He wanted to be treated. All men must properly treat men like they sincerely want to be treated. Therefore, the object of our gracious acceptance has no bearing on demands to offer acceptance. This is why where ever Christ walked He miraculously healed all men. We are like the apostle who says that he does not view men according to the flesh.

 

Sin is the cause of mutual destruction in peaceful relationships. The problem is that because we live in a ruined world all men face an enemy that violates our desires and purposes. The law commands ever genuine person to faithfully represent the image God created them to be. But we display an obnoxious image to the genuine desires of other sensible men.This is the fundamental problem, even if we carefully performed it the best our social relationships would still be unsatisfying. Mutual satisfaction is only experienced when our unique needs are met by someone who adequately appreciates us better than we know ourselves. Someone must not merely acknowledge our legitimate need and fulfill it but He must know by appropriate action the optimal experience of mutual desire unified to action. There is no man able to display this by action or be the perfect answer to our needs. This is why our principal enemy in this fallen world remains bondage to living our lives through other people.

If God just came to be the example and miraculously heal, all mankind, would it be enough to create His eternal kingdom on earth? An established kingdom that is completely unified and fully satisfying? No, because God must properly deal with the prevalent corruption and violence. You see this invariably requires God to be in an impossible situation. If God were merely to accept the sin and the violence for the premium sake of peace He would be responsible for willingly allowing violence and murder. He would over look the sins of the beloved saints which are a good thing, but the world would never experience satisfaction because the opposition would continue. God in conveniently overlooking the sin and violence could not be the defender of the innocent victim.

This is why sin demands death. Every petty departure from the law demands death. If God were to accurately judge by a grade, there would continue to be no need for grace. The whole point of the extraordinary value of grace was it came from the historic accomplishment of Christ who willingly died in our place. You see the unique value of grace is the comparative freedom to experience a world where sin has been adequately dealt with by death. This is why in the covenant relationship God graciously offers no other remedy than approaching us by forgetting our sins. If God remembered our sins then the death of Christ would be unsatisfactory and we would never be accepted. We would constantly be abandoned in considerable distress. Because all distress is the operational need to overcome pain by being accepted. This is why God views saints as weak. Because our cognitive ability to keep a record and humbly confess our sins are never acceptable. Therefore, God connects graciously according to His forgetfulness and not according to His demands. We act justly according to His grace.
 

The other side is saying God is sovereign but will not violate our wills. If God is sovereign then, He accomplishes whatever pleases Him unless He is thwarted by a greater will. We humbly acknowledge that God is free to act as He pleases. If we entertain the idea that we are free to act in ourselves whatever we desire then we would be intentionally setting up a god of our own making. I do not think gods are made merely out of corporeal things but gods we create in our minds. We acknowledge God accomplishes whatever pleases Him because the accurate idea exalts God to be the Highest.

 It is in our most compelling interest to define God as "other" because we are moral creatures. If God is "other" there is no law that He is under. The law is really not the highest standard but God Himself is the highest. God is above the law I do not believe we know the absolute demands of the law. This is why the law accurately shows us our sin. I properly mean in a very crude way. As the Psalmist says who can discern his errors. So God acts in Himself as He alone is pleased with His corrective actions.

 God shows justice, faithfulness, kindness, and love by acting in the unity of fulfilling the demands of the law throughout all time. This symmetry, which emanates true unity, is a Trinitarian work. This divine communication is through the spirit of the sacred words. The word of God is a coherent whole not in distinct parts. All the words are Trinitarian. Each word maintains the spirit of all the words. So in a sense, the fundamental symmetry created by meeting the demands of the law throughout all time is the spirit of one word of sacred scripture. The Psalmist considers this the word of salvation.

 When the Psalmist meditates, his earnest petition to make it pleasing to create the future symmetry and divine unity of God's perfect acts. God creates from nothing and faithfully recreates the new. We experience the alignment of our souls as we discover the detail of God's recreation. We vicariously experience spiritual renewal through the sacred word and Spirit. 
 

God has sufficiently established His kingdom on this earth through an eternal covenant with David. This eternal kingdom was meticulously planned and worked out in the eternity past in the eternal counsel of God. The sovereign counsel was spoken before the foundation of the world predetermining the necessary end of all things in six pronouncements. The accurate description of all things is pronounced endowing with an eternal covenant with David. The six pronouncements spoken by the king have been sovereignly worked out in time vesting in the supreme justice of God. The divine justice of God is mediated to the victorious king in the authoritative pronouncements of life and death.

 The expressed desires of God's eternal kingdom are implanted in the saints by the pronouncements. The King of heaven pronounces all things into necessary existence by the law, covenants, curses, decrees, statutes, and promises. The thorough history and lawful order of creation were predetermined in eternity past. Everything is produced under the divine authority of God according to His pronouncements in generously allowing and preventing as they are brought into existence.

 This eternal kingdom is performed according to God's knowledge and understanding. God has sufficiently revealed His will by speaking the established law, covenants, curses, judicial decrees, comprehensive statutes, and promises. He has revealed the six pronouncements according to His mysterious understanding of the existence of all things. We rise to God by creating the kingdom through His pronouncements. These six desires that are pronounced by the saints are the consuming power of God. Our corrupted understanding is reasonably satisfied as our heartfelt desires are consumed in speaking the authoritative pronouncements.

God rules through His divine justice and eternal righteousness presenting with the six authoritative pronouncements that predetermined the necessary existence of all things in eternity past. Everything that exists has already been justified by God's rendering to blessing and cursing in eternity past. God inseparably unites His desires with us as we rise to the comprehensive standard of His justice in pronouncing cursing and blessing. His kingdom is adequately established by the commanding voice of the law according to His covenant. God's ideal kingdom is present in covenant-law. He controls life and death through covenant -law. The covenant law is pronounced by the victorious king in recreating God's expanding kingdom on this earth.

 God has declared all things into existence according to His legal obligation to uphold His covenant with David and the saints. God had to sufficiently satisfy His justice by amply atoning for man's sin. Sin not only brought death into the world but also the perceptual process of necessary destruction. All of God's creation was cursed. Consequently, God had to reasonably satisfy the curse of the law in the death of His Son. These six kingdom pronouncements established the authority of God in allowing and preventing for the purpose of quelling all opposition in cursing the curse and establishing God's ultimate justice by blessing the saints.

 God satisfactorily established His ideal government in eternity past. He sufficiently revealed the accurate description of divine His justice and effective advocacy in the authoritative pronouncements. The Psalmist appropriately describes God's eternal government and priesthood being present in the pronouncements as the unique revelation of Melchizedek. In eternity past God foreordained all things according to His paternal government and high priestly work in the incarnation. He unified the history before and after the cross in these six pronouncements because He is always righteous and just.

The Psalmist is teaching we are intimately related to God by the creation covenant. God has created and orders all things to save His elect. The unique anger that God displays is towards those who are not part of His kingdom. God has adopted us into a stable  family with the guaranteed security of a Father. He orders all dishonorable things for our  preservation and His everlasting glory. God's controlled anger is typically displayed in the cursing of the wicked.

 In Psalm 4 he is teaching us how to deal appropriately with our personal anger. Our anger is like God's controlled anger. As God sufficiently established and orders all things for our productive good so we too react with anger when the wicked redefine God's law and make idols out of creation. They overturn God's purpose in our pleasure of ruling over the created things plotting evil by re-imaging them. They subject people to bondage.

 When man sinned God curse the magnificent creation. The curse spoke eternal condemnation to lawbreakers. The curse was the effective instrument God used to properly direct eternal anger. God killed the determined opposition to His peaceable kingdom by cursing the creation. The sole hope of re-establishing the relationship with God was through slaughter and death. God executed a sacrifice as an instrument to amply avenge the wicked who resurrects the power of death. In making idols out of lifeless things, they intentionally attempt to kill God and the saints.

 In your anger slaughter the animal sacrifice. We must implement the law to silence the considerable opposition. We lose control when we painstakingly build a pragmatic system of mutual threats and intentional violence. Because divine vengeance is God's fulfilled curse! The Psalmist deals with anger by cursing the wicked. Without the curse, we are in danger of exterminating the human race. Everything we possess is transferred according to His own goodness. The psalmist complains about troubles in the context of God's Fatherly care in the house of God's creation. God's anger is the appropriate display of His curse evidenced in protecting the saints reordering the creation for their good.

 God's law is not a practical instrument of grading. His law is perfect and absolutely just at all times. It is the formidable instrument of cursing and blessing. We face trials in this life surrounded by the creation in which God's curse is present in the work of the law. The Psalmist is constantly complaining to God when he is encountering the destructive force of the curse as the consequences of God's judgment of the world.

 I have witnessed so much supernatural work in my life I hope I can accurately tell the whole story. After I had rebuilt the roof and carefully secure the house, a humanitarian group of industrious people from the Carolina's had volunteered at our local church. They gutted my house. After we had renovated the house, I was hitherto experiencing an urge to profitably sell the house and move to central Florida. But it was not till three years later that I had such anguish that we mutually decided to move. God had sufficiently prepared an ideal place that was completely unified with our appropriate gifts. It was the first time I discovered the social unity that God miraculously restores in our lives.

 We had finally got a buyer for our home and as we were traveling up to central Florida I looked in the mirror of the U-Haul and noticed that the car I was towing was unattached. I turned around and as I was driving I observe the car sitting at the intersection we had just left. We mutually decided to drive up and stay at my generous parent's house and search for a modest house in central Florida. I was In much meditation seeking the Lord for our current home.

 When I began to memorize sacred scripture, I had become a needed discipline in meditating while driving leisurely. Consequently, as we traveled to central Florida, I was meditating. We visited some friends on the eastern side of Orlando who had also moved up attending Sprouls Church. But I did feel uncomfortable in that local area. As we traveled west, we came to a small town that consists of the only hills in Florida. I fondly remembered as an adolescent child passing through the town on vacation to SC and affectionately referring to the hills ask if we were in the mountains.

 We drove through the town and noticed it was part of a continuous chain of lakes. We both were smitten. Consequently, we decided the next day to depart to a real-estate office. In selling our house we had deposited a considerable sum of money. We were seeking a house that provided a small mortgage to us. The agent ferried us to our neighboring house that was in the town but secluded enough that we cautiously avoided the traffic. When we sat down to execute out the buy a lawyer replied in a southern voice. Your going to think you dieeed and went to heaven. Lol It unquestionably was a prophecy.

  Biography

We traveled south to get to our modular home. We understood it would be demolished. But we were  not allowed to enter the area because the streets were jammed. So we headed to my in-laws. The national guard was policing the protected areas that were blocked off. Psalm 29 poetically describes the extensive destruction of the storm that departs from the city in profound silence. I would be meditating on that Psalm at peaceful night as the fierce storm had left us without electricity and there was a distinct silence. God had eliminated all of the comforts of life and made the conditions perfectly suitable for prayer and meditation. The sole comfort was God who had spoken in the historic storm.

 I was learning as a young man that when God launches a monumental event He is getting eager to bless beyond our understanding. God will turn a city upside down to bless His beloved children. I investigated stories of local people who for the first time were in such terrible conditions that they were sincerely praying. I learned in the Psalms that it is an abundant blessing of God when He turns an evil society upside down. He intentionally causes people to come together as a creative way to return the creation covenant.

 We waited for two weeks to be able to enter our house. The entire city looked like an active war zone. The fierce storm had uprooted most of the trees. Since our house was flattened, we were qualified to negotiate a loan. It was almost no interest. We mutually decided to go across the street to an exclusive neighborhood that was wood frame construction. The problem was we were competing economically with wealthy investors. But God amply secured us a man who was looking affectionately to sell his house with no stable roof to a young couple. We offered him the sum of our loan humbly trusting that God would provide money for me to rebuild. He had been offered more money by the private investor but he graciously sold us the modest house. We had paid a fraction of the cost of that house that was in a guarded neighborhood.

 I did not realize that at the time that God was generously bestowing a gift so that we gained the freedom to minister to others in the foreseeable future. Andrew was the first rare storm to cause a catastrophic disaster to the US for 20 years so the private insurance company was handing out 50 thousand dollar checks to local homeowners. Most of the local people sold the damaged house and evacuated the local area.

 After we had purchased the private house, we had left the local church where we were married and faithfully attended a reformed Baptist church. As well as changing my fundamental theology because of meditating in the psalms I enthusiastically embraced historical Calvinism at the new church. We learned the church was going to give us money to rebuild, and an elder who had a drywall company would finish the walls in our house as a gift. Now you appreciate the considerable amount of supernatural work that I witnessed that started with my lifelong fascination with psalm 29.

 

Do modern philosophy and psychology answer the fundamental question of who we are? This question presumes we can look at ourselves and produce an image. Whenever we observe people, we are organizing the qualities of whom they are. The bible says we are body and soul. We naturally possess five senses. These essential qualities are universal. But we further possess a distinct identity. In recognizing who we are by our image, it is not enough to identify these universal qualities. The philosophical question is can we divide these diverse qualities and sufficiently examine them according to empirical studies about human behavior and discover who we are?

 When we discuss the causes of our existence because God fashioned us it is essential we recognize Him. The fundamental question is does the bible offer us a comprehensive understanding of who we are? The Bible remains the sole source of the essential definitions of whom we are. But man has also discovered certain behaviors through empirical observation and scientifically explains them in personality profiles. Consequently, when we are properly discussing the difference between biblical understanding of how we are developed and function or man's explanations through experience one is essential and the other non-essential. The Bible's persuasive explanation focuses on the source of what comprises a man, but the profile studies naturally identify universal behaviors.

 The key question is does the bible offer one effective way of explaining who a man is but there are other equally essential ways of helping a man to discover precisely who he is? The observed difference between the biblical approach and the human study approach is the bible relates our causes directly from God, while the human study by observation in dividing man up and identifying the specific problem. How narrow is the Bible's comparative approach? It proclaims we cannot understand ourselves unless we discover who God is. Instead of the pragmatic approach of dividing man and identifying the specific problem the bible says that man can comprehensively discover himself as he understands the distinct image of the Perfect Man. This is a radical approach because it is proclaiming that One Man sufficiently defines every likely person who ever existed.

 Can the image of one man help many men accept themselves in light of their distinguishing qualities? This One-man image creating the individual image needs to be comprehensively examined. Can the image of one man help develop unique personal images? If you think about this, it cannot conceivably happen through a sensible idea of the image of the One Man but through a meaningful relationship with this one man. This is what we are reasonably maintaining that God is big enough to listen sympathetically to every individual and amply satisfy every need even if the specific needs of one man invariably suffer subversive ends to another man.

 We confuse the teaching of self-denial as the sole way to genuinely know God and ourselves with our satisfied desire to get all of our essential needs. If we know ourselves by knowing God how we can know if God does not provide us with knowledge of ourselves as we were created? Is God enjoining us to resolutely deny our desire to accommodate our needs for us to know Him as self-denial? Is functional ability our comprehensive understanding of God by communication of accommodating our needs? This is what we are maintaining we are incompetent unless God provides the ability we desire which is more than performance. We require the ability to understand who we are because God sufficiently knows Himself.